CHINESE tourists could be the saviour of single-use public transport tickets in Melbourne.

Yesterday The Age reported the government was planning to withdraw single-use tickets when myki replaces Metcard in 2013, leaving visitors to Melbourne and occasional train, tram or bus users unable to travel unless they bought one of the $10 smartcards.

Transport Ticketing Authority head Bernie Carolan said that from January 2013, ''all passengers will require a long-life myki card to travel on public transport''.

Tourism Minister Louise Asher has opened the door to keeping short-term tickets in Melbourne.

Asked yesterday if there would be further consideration of retaining a short-term, single-use ticket instead of only myki cards, Mr Carolan confirmed the plan to offer only reusable myki smartcards.

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But Tourism Minister Louise Asher opened the door to keeping short-term tickets in Melbourne, partly as a consequence of the government's push to increase Chinese tourism.

Speaking at the launch of Jetstar's new Beijing service yesterday, Ms Asher said withdrawing short-term, single-use tickets in Melbourne was ''part of the negotiations within government''.

''The shorter-term tickets are something that's on the negotiating table,'' she said.

■ A panel in yesterday's Age indicated that Melbourne would join Singapore as one of the only cities in the world with a public transport smartcard system that does not also offer a one-off travel-for-cash option. In fact, Singapore does offer a one-off ticket that can be bought using cash, along with a cheaper fare using a smartcard. The mistake was made by the reporter.

56 comments so far

Any system that discourages visitors or occasional users of public transport is clearly a system that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Surely common sense has to prevail on this issue. It can't be that hard.

Idiotic thinking to scrap tickets for short term use. But then again, we have become accustomed to a lot of idiotic thinking on the issue of public transport, haven't we?

Not only that but the left hand apparently doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Louise Asher and Bernie Carolan need to talk.

Commenter

Melbo

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

July 14, 2011, 7:21AM

Actually, In Singapore, you can buy a smart card, use it then at the end of the single journey, get your money back. Will/does Myki do this? What would say, people who only turn up in Melbourne for a day or so do? loose $10 on top of their ticket price?

Commenter

Steve

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

July 14, 2011, 7:27AM

Think back, the system would have been up and running now and with short term tickets had we not changed governments.

Commenter

Brian

Location

Fitzroy

Date and time

July 14, 2011, 7:27AM

Singapore does offer a sort of single use ticket.The ticket machine dispenses a smartcard ticket for $1SG which is refunded by a claim machine at the destination.

In KL the e-tickets are "swallowed" by the destination gate and re-used.

Commenter

TimG

Location

Woodend

Date and time

July 14, 2011, 7:28AM

@Gordon Hickey : Absolutely clueless to force Myki on any of us, but especially tourists! These are the people that some here for a short visit and go back home to tell their friends about their trip... imagine them all going home and saying it was impossible to get anywhere in the city because of over-congestion and ridiculous rules about public transport fares, even for a short one-off trip!

Commenter

alpha

Location

St. Kilda

Date and time

July 14, 2011, 7:30AM

''part of the negotiations within government''

how arrogant, remember you are there to serve the people.

Commenter

hermione

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

July 14, 2011, 7:44AM

The "Chinese tourist" argument doesn't work. They would be comfortable with the scheme: you fly into Hong Kong or Shanghai, you buy a smart card at the airport and sell it back when you leave.

Commenter

Bill

Date and time

July 14, 2011, 7:48AM

Through the 70's 80s and early 90's Australian software developers and innovators were regarded as world-class - often being utilised by foreign multi-national and consumer electronics corporations to develop te best-in-class solutions - usually because of the logical and intuitive design of their user-interfaces and the like,Where did we go wrong?